Recent fold up the China largest trade event of 126th Canton Fair was successfully concluded in Guangzhou. Xu Bing, Deputy Secretary General and Spokesperson of the Canton Fair and Deputy Director General of China Foreign Trade Centre, introduced to media about the general situation of this session.

Xu said the number of the buyers at this session was as expected and the quality of the buyers has been improved steadily against the slowdown of the world economic growth and the complicated and severe foreign trade situation. Buyer attendance of the 126th Canton Fair totaled 186,015 from 214 countries (regions), a decline of 2% over the 124th session.

Buyer attendance from China’s top 10 trading partner countries and regions in 2018 accounted for 61.62% of the total. The number of buyers from “Belt and Road” countries stood at 85,445, an increase of 1.03% over the same period of last year. It accounts for 45.93% of the total, 1.37 percentage points higher over the same period of last year.

Buyer attendance of the top 20 countries and regions accounted for 60.56% of the total. The top 10 countries and regions in terms of buyer attendance are Hong Kong SAR, the United States, India, Thailand, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan Province, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Xu mentioned 107 out of the Top 250 Global Retailers in 2019 attended the Fair. Among them were 5 of the Top 10 retailers: Wal-Mart, Schwartz, Amazon, Walgreen and CVS Health.


Lidl in Germany, Lifetime Brands in America, Auchan Group in France, LOCK&LOCK in South Korea, TAURUS GROUP in Spain, KESKO GROUP in Finland, Kawan Lama Group in Indonesia and other international well-known chain enterprises continue to participate in the multinational sourcing activities.

Buyer attendance proportion in terms of industries is: electronics and household electrical appliances accounting for 40.71% of the total, daily consumer goods 31.93%, home decorations 28.34%, gifts 27.23%, and machinery 26.48%.

The highlights of this session, the organizer extended service and function of Canton Fair and given full play to its role of a platform for all-round opening up and “buying from, selling to and benefiting the world”, shone the name card of “Made in China”, and supported exhibitors to explore and diversify international market and upgrade China’s foreign trade, in order for products of high quality, better design and stronger function to benefit the whole world.

Xu pointed we’ve stuck to the principle of “innovative, specialized, targeted and delicate”, launched global promotion in a targeted manner, and ensured the quality of buyers and diversified buyer origin. We saw a large attendance of 74722 new buyers, accounting for 40.17% of the total; which helps exhibitors maintain their traditional markets while open up emerging ones to optimize global market mix. Despite the diversified export channels nowadays, Canton Fair remains as the most important channel for Chinese companies and products to develop global market, and the ballast stone and anchor for China’s foreign trade development. We’ve also enhanced the Fair’s role of facilitating trade by design and encouraged exhibitors to extend to the high-end value chain. 111 design institutes from 16 countries and regions participated in the fair, and provided promotion and design service for 14070 companies/times. 74 exhibitors and 106 products have won the 2019 CF Awards. The CF Awards display hall was renovated in this session and receives 1500 visitors daily, with greater marketing effect and better exemplary function of encouraging exhibitors to engage in self innovation.

Xu also stated we continue to advance “Smart Canton Fair” and Online offline integration centered on 6 new business models—i-Service, i-Preview, i-Travel, i-Matching, i-Verification, i-Promotion has taken shape. Various smart services have been optimized and upgraded. According to statistics, wifi users totaled 234080, an increase of 43% over the last year. On-site Internet service was used over 173000 times. Exhibitor & Product system has been visited for over 228,000 times. “Highlight products” were widely welcomed, which was visited for 42000 times by users, which facilitated brand companies to develop global market. Achievements in building Smart Canton Fair show that Canton Fair not only is a “big guy” in import and export, but also has “big wisdom” in digital development. Apart from “selling to and buying from the world”, it can also connect the world with its “intelligence” and allow attendees to enjoy “smart” life. We are committed to build an online-offline integrated platform and have blazed a path of high quality development, a vivid explanation of “digital China”.

Editor: Judy Smith